This is my year of observation.

July 2. 

July 2, 2014

Bigelow tells me that saddlers sometimes use the excrescence, the whitish fungus, on the birch to stick their awls in. Men find a use for everything at last. I saw one nailed up in his shop with an awl in it. 

Last night, as I lay awake, I dreamed of the muddy and weedy river on which I had been paddling, and I seemed to derive some vigor from my day's experience like the lilies which have their roots at the bottom. 

I have plucked a white lily bud just ready to expand, and, after keeping it in water for two days,  have turned back its sepals with my hand and touched the lapped points of the petals, when they sprang open and rapidly expanded in my hand into a perfect blossom, with the petals as perfectly disposed at equal intervals as on their native lakes, and in this case, of course, untouched by an insect. 

I cut its stem short and placed it in a broad dish of water, where it sailed about under the breath of the beholder with a slight undulatory motion. The breeze of his half-suppressed admiration it was that filled its sail. 

It was a rare-tinted one. A kind of popular aura that may be trusted, methinks. Men will travel to the Nile to see the lotus flower  who have never seen in their glory the lotuses of their native streams. 

The Mollugo verticillata, carpet-weed, is just beginning in the garden, and the Polygonum convolvulus, black bindweed. 

The spikes of the pale lobelia, some  blue, some white, passing insensibly from one to the other, and especially hard to distinguish in the twilight, are quite handsome now in moist ground, rising above the grass. 

The prunella has various tints in various lights, now blue, now lilac. As the twilight deepens into night, its color changes. It always suggests freshness and coolness, from the places where it grows. 

I see the downy heads of the senecio gone to seed, thistle-like but small. 

The gnaphaliums and this are among the earliest to present this appearance. 

On my way to the Hubbard Bathing-Place, at sun-down. 

The blue-eyed grass shuts up before night, and me-thinks it does not open very early the next morning. 

The Cornus stolonifera, red osier, osier rouge, well out, and probably has been a day or two. I have got the order of the cornels, I think, pretty well. 

I see plenty of the Peltandra Virginica coming forward in Hubbard's meadow, and its lobes are more blunt than the sagittaria. 

Pogonias are very common in the meadows now. 

The seed-vessels of the Iris Virginica are formed. 

At the bathing-place there is [a] hummock which was floated on to the meadow some springs ago, now densely covered with the handsome red-stemmed wild rose, a full but irregular clump, from the ground, showing no bare stems below, but a dense mass of shining leaves and small red stems above in their midst, and on every side now, in the twilight, more than usually beautiful they appear. Countless roses, partly closed, of a very deep rich color, as if the rays of the departed sun still shone through them; a more spiritual rose this hour, beautifully blushing; and then the unspeakable beauty and promise of those fair swollen buds that spot the mass, which will blossom to-morrow, and the more distant promise of the handsomely formed green ones, which yet show no red, for few things are handsomer than a rosebud in any stage; these mingled with a few pure white elder blossoms and some rosaceous or pinkish meadow-sweet heads. I am confident that there can be nothing so beautiful in any cultivated garden, with all their varieties, as this wild clump. 

I afterwards found a similar though not so large and dense a clump of sweetbriars. Methinks their flowers are not so fragrant, and perhaps never of so deep a red. Perhaps they are more sure to open in a pitcher than the last. 

It is starlight. Near woods the veery is a steady singer at this hour. 

I notice that the lowest leaves of my potamogeton are pellucid and wavy, which  combined with their purplish tinge on the surface, makes me doubt if it be not the pulcher. 

Do the hardhack leaves stand up and hug the stem at night, that they show their under sides so? 

Nature is reported not by him who goes forth consciously as an observer, but in the fullness of life. To such a one she rushes to make her report. To the full heart she is all but a figure of speech. This is my year of observation and I fancy that my friends are also more devoted to outward observation than ever before, as if it were an epidemic. 

I cross the brook by Hubbard's little bridge. 

Now nothing but the cool invigorating scent which is perceived at night in these low meadowy places where the alder and ferns grow can restore my spirits. (I made it an object to find a new Parmelia caperata in fruit in each walk.) 

At this season, methinks, we do not regard the larger features of the landscape, as in the spring, but are absorbed in details. 

Then, when the meadows were flooded, I looked far over them to the distant woods and the outlines of hills, which were more distinct. I should not have so much to say of extensive water or landscapes at this season. 

You are a little bewildered by the variety of objects. There must be a certain meagreness of details and nakedness for wide views. (The obtuse galium shows its minute white flowers in the meadows.) 

If I remember, the early part of June was cool, as also the latter, though we had some hot weather, perhaps, toward the middle. 

The clover heads are drying up except in meadows. 

9 o'clock. The full moon rising (or full last night) is revealed first by some slight clouds above the eastern horizon looking white, the first indication that she is about to rise, the traces of day not yet gone in the west . In the west, similar clouds, seen against a lighter sky, look dark and heavy. Now a lower cloud in the east reflects a more yellowish light. The moon, far over the round globe travelling this way, sends her light forward to yonder cloud, from which the news of her coming is reflected to us. 

The moon's aurora! it is without redness or fulgidness, like the dawn of philosophy, and its noon, too. At her dawning no cocks crow. How few creatures to hail her rising! Only some belated travellers that may be abroad this night. 

What graduated information of her coming! More and more yellow glows the low cloud, with concentrating light, and now the moon's edge suddenly appears above a low bank of cloud not seen before, and she seems to come forward apace without introduction, after all; and the steadiness with which she rises with undisturbed serenity, like a queen who has learned to walk before her court, is glorious, and she soon reaches the open sea of the heavens. She seems to advance (so, perchance, flows the blood in the veins of the beholder) by graceful sallying essays, trailing her garment up the sky.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1852

Nature is reported not by him who goes forth consciously as an observer, but in the fullness of life. See September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you."); May 10, 1853 ("He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. . . .I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant."); May 6, 1854 ("There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective."

I have plucked a white lily bud just ready to expand, and, after keeping it in water for two days, have turned back its sepals with my hand and touched the lapped points of the petals, when they sprang open and rapidly expanded in my hand into a perfect blossom. See July 4, 1852 ("I bring home a dozen perfect lily buds. . .which have never yet opened; I prepare a large pan of water; I cut their stems quite short; I turn back their calyx-leaves with my fingers, so that they may float upright; I touch the points of their petals, and breathe or blow on them, and toss them in. They spring open rapidly, or gradually expand in the course of an hour.")

It is starlight. Near woods the veery is a steady singer at this hour. See June 28,1852 ("When I get nearer the wood, the veery is heard."). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Veery

Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea.

July 8. 

P. M. — To Laurel Glen. 

A chewink's nest with four young just hatched, at the bottom of the pyrola hollow and grove, where it is so dry, about seven feet southwest of a white pine. 

Counted the rings of a white pine stump, sawed off last winter at Laurel Glen. It was three and a half feet diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings. 

Chimaphila umbellata, apparently a day or two. 

I find the Pyrola secunda only on the point of expanding. 

Hear apparently redstarts there, — so they must have nests near, — also pine warblers and till tilts. 

Later. — To Gowing's Swamp. 

The Gaylussacia dumosa is now in prime at least. 


The drosera, round and spatulate leafed, is very abundant and handsome on the sphagnum in the open spaces, amid the Andromeda calyculata and polifolia. 

Pogonia ophioglossoides
(Portsmouth Public Library)

Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower. 

Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia, which she saw very abundantly in bloom on the Blue Hills (Bigelow's locality) on the 29th of June. Says she has seen the pine-sap this year in Concord.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 8, 1857

A white pine stump . . . was three and a half feet diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings. See November 18, 1852 ("Measured a stick of round timber, probably white pine, on the cars this afternoon, -- ninety-five feet long, nine and ten-twelfths in circumference at butt. . .. From Vermont.”); November 1, 1860 ("Measure some pine stumps on Tommy Wheeler's land [cut] four years ago. One, having 164 rings, sprang up at least one hundred and sixty-eight years ago, or about the year 1692, or fifty-seven years after the settlement, 1635.”)

I find the Pyrola secunda only on the point of expanding. See March 7, 1855 ("The Pyrola secunda is a perfect evergreen. It has lost none of its color or freshness, with its thin ovate finely serrate leaves, revealed now the snow is gone.”)

Hear apparently redstarts there, — so they must have nests near . . . See July 13, 1856 (“Saw and heard two or three redstarts at Redstart Woods, where they probably have nests. ”); June 23, 1855 ("Probably a redstart’s nest on a white oak sapling, twelve feet up, on forks against stem. Have it. See young redstarts about.”)
 
The drosera, round and spatulate leafed, is very abundant . . .See July 13,, 1856 ("Hubbard's meadow — . . . Drosera longifolia and also rotundifolia, some time.”)

Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower:

• The snakemouth orchid or rose pogonia is  distinctive orchid, with a pink flower and a single clasping leaf half way up the stem. The specific name (ophioglossoides) refers to the fact that Adder's tongue ferns (Ophioglossum), have a similar single leaf half way up the stem. ~ GoBotany

•  P. ophioglossoides. Snake-mouthed Arethusa, from which genus it was taken; stem nearly a foot high, with a single flower, nodding and pale-purple, and one oval-lanceolate leaf, and a leafy bract near the flower; lip fimbriate; swamps; July. The flower resembles a snake's head, whence its specific name. ~ Reports on the herbaceous plants and on the quadrupeds of Massachusetts 199(1840).

Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia.  Long leaved bluet (Houstonia) ~ Gobotany

Edith Emerson shows me Oldenlandia purpurea var. longifolia . . .See note to May 29, 1856 ("Found a painted-cup with more yellow than usual in it, and at length Edith found one perfectly yellow. . . ")

We find only the world we look for.

July 2

Partridge-berry in bloom

(Mitchella repens)

July 2, 2017

(avesong)

P. M. — To Gowing's Swamp. 

Flannery says that there was a frost this morning in Moore's Swamp on the Bedford road, where he has potatoes. He observed something white on the potatoes about 3.30 a. m. and, stooping, breathed on and melted it. Minott says he has known a frost every month in the year, but at this season it would be a black frost, which bites harder than a white one. 

The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. This is commonly an inconspicuous bush, eight to twelve inches high, half prostrate over the sphagnum in which it grows, together with the andromedas, European cranberry, etc., etc., but sometimes twenty inches high quite on the edge of the swamp. It has a very large and peculiar bell-shaped flower, with prominent ribs and a rosaceous tinge, and is not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom. 

The flower deserves a more particular description than Gray gives it. But Bigelow says well of its corolla that it is "remarkable for its distinct, five angled form." Its segments are a little recurved. The calyx-segments are acute and pink at last; the racemes, elongated, about one inch long, one-sided; the corolla, narrowed at the mouth, but very wide above; the calyx, with its segments, pedicels, and the whole raceme (and indeed the leaves somewhat), glandular-hairy. 

Calla palustris (with its convolute point like the cultivated) at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. 

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for. 

July 2, 2017

I hear many Maryland yellow-throats about the edge of this swamp, and even [?] near their nests. Indeed, I find one or two old ones suspended much like a red-wing's amid the water andromeda. They are quite small and of such material as this bird chooses. 

I see amid the Andromeda Polifolia pure bright crimson leaves, and, looking closely, find that in many instances one branch, affected by a kind of disease, bears very handsome light-crimson leaves, two or three times as wide as usual, of the usual white color beneath, which contrast strangely with the slender green and glaucous ones on the contiguous branches. 

The water andromeda has similar crimson leaves, only proportionally larger and coarser, showing the dots. These are very common. Those of the Polifolia far more delicate. 

Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 2, 1857

The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella, not yet quite in prime. . . . not to be mistaken for the edible huckleberry or blueberry blossom. See June 25, 1857 ("To Gowing's Swamp. . . . Gaylussacia dumosa apparently in a day or two.”):

• Dwarf huckleberry (Gaylussacia bigeloviana or Gaylussacia dumosa is a northern plant that occurs in bogs and fens. Its delicate, bell-like flowers tinged in pink mature into juicy black fruits, which are eaten by ruffed grouse, quail, turkeys, foxes, and squirrels.~ GoBotany

 See also   August 30, 1856 (“I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella . . .. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth.”);August 8, 1858 (“the Gaylussacia dumosa var. hiriella . . . the only inedible species of  Vaccinieoe that I know in this town”)

It grows, together with the andromedas, European cranberry, etc., etc. See August 30, 1856 "(I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, which Emerson says is the common cranberry of the north of Europe.")

Calla palustris . . . at the south end of Gowing's Swamp. Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. See May 29, 1856 (“Where you find a rare flower, expect to find more rare ones.”); June 19, 1856 ("Looked at a collection of the rarer plants made by Higginson and placed at the Natural History Rooms. Among which noticed:. . . the Calla palustris”); June 7, 1857 (“Pratt has got the Calla palustris, in prime. . .from the bog near Bateman's Pond”); June 9, 1857( “The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. I had said to Pratt, "It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others." ”); June 24, 1857 ("Found [in Owl-Nest Swamp] the Calla palustris, out of bloom, and the naumbergia, now in prime, which was hardly begun on the 9th at Bateman Pond Swamp.”); August 29, 1857 ("I find the calla [in Owl-Nest Swamp] going to seed, but still the seed is green.”); May 29, 1858 ("At Calla Swamp. . .Calla apparently in two or three, or three or four days, the very earliest") The Owl-Nest Swamp , Bateman Pond Swamp and Calla Swamp are the same,  being the bog located south of Bateman’s Pond.

~ Calla (bog arum, marsh calla, wild calla, water-arum) is a genus of flowering plant containing the single species Calla palustris. Not to be confused with species from tropical Africa in a separate genus, often termed "calla lilies”.~ Wikipedia

One or two old yellow-throat nests quite small and of such material as this bird chooses.See note to June 7, 1857 (“A nest well made outside of leaves, then grass, lined with fine grass, very deep and narrow, with thick sides, with four small somewhat cream-colored eggs with small brown and some black spots chiefly toward larger end.”)

Looking closely, find that in many instances one branch, affected by a kind of disease, bears very handsome light-crimson leaves . . .See April 19 1852 ("How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact! suggesting what worlds remain to be unveiled. That phenomenon of the andromeda seen against the sun cheers me exceedingly. .... It is a natural magic. These little leaves are the stained windows in the cathedral of my world.”)

Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i. e., we are not looking for it. See March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. He must look through and beyond her. “); March 29, 1853 (“It is not till we are completely lost, or turned around, --for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, --do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.”); June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”) November 6, 1853 (“It is remarkable how little we attend to what is passing before us constantly, unless our genius directs our attention that way.”); December 11, 1855; ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”); September 2, 1856; ("It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I am in a thrilled and expectant mood,. . .”); September 9, 1858 (“A man sees only what concerns him.”); November 4, 1858 ("Objects are concealed from our view not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray (continued) as because there is no intention of the mind and eye toward them. We do not realize how far and widely, or how near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater part of the phenomena of nature are for this reason concealed to us all our lives.. . . We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name.”); January 5, 1860 ("A man receives only what he is ready to receive. . . . He does not observe the phenomenon that cannot be linked with the rest which he has observed, however novel and remarkable it may be. A man tracks himself through life, apprehending only what he already half knows.”); Autumnal tints.("Objects are concealed from our view, not so much because they are out of the course of our visual ray as because we do not bring our minds and eyes to bear on them”)

Many an object

not seen as we find only

the world we look for.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, We find only the world we look for. 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau 

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2025

I turn to listen to a hermit thrush by the Fisher Pond

The partridge-berry in bloom, a  pretty fringed flower in pairs.

The black throated blue sings at the view.

Hemlock cones form near the end of new branchlets.

Jane finds a miniature acorn, a tiny Hickory nut 

and a hop hornbeam flower on the forest floor.

We are out for five hours in mid-afternoon the sun just slanting through the trees as we come home at 6:30. The rain of the past week has washed all the trails clear of leaves and we improve natures work along the way,  first cutting up climb across the neighbors land to the double chair it is hot and still, then down around the Fisher pond and back up over the ridge detouring to the porcupine tree then bushwhacking side-hill towards the view.

Jane puts a blanket down for the dogs but ends up on it  herself it's like a beach she says without the water or the sand. Clouds float in the sky it seems clear and dry straight overhead we stay a long time listening to the black throated blue at the view 

We go down the long way deep into the big house swamp now overgrown with nettles that Jane clears out it is full of water and wet all the way out to our land and beyond.  we cross the stream by the fort (east side) and there's as much water there as I have seen. Sunlight slanting through the trees making spots on the cliffs as we walk out the Boulder trail home

I turn to listen 

to a hermit thrush by the 

Kendall-Fisher Pond.

Clouds float in the sky 

a long time listening to 

the black throated blue 

We are out five hours 

the sun just slanting through the 

trees as we come home.

zphx 20170702

The poet naturalist

June 30.

Nature must be viewed humanly to be viewed at all; that is, her scenes must be associated with humane affections, such as are associated with one's native place, for instance. 

She is most significant to a lover. 

A lover of Nature is preeminently a lover of man. If I have no friend, what is Nature to me? She ceases to be morally significant.

7.30 p. m. — To stone bridge over Assabet. 

Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. 

Cat-mint (Nepeta cataria) in bloom.

The moon appears full. At first a mere white cloud. As soon as the sun sets, begins to grow brassy or obscure golden in the gross atmosphere. 

It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear. The moon is now brighter, but not so yellowish. 

Ten or fifteen minutes after, the fireflies are observed, at first about the willows on the Causeway, where the evening is further advanced. 

Sparrows quite generally, and occasionally a robin sings. (I heard a bobolink this afternoon.) The creak of the crickets is more universal and loud, and becomes a distinct sound. 

The oily surface of the river in which the moon is reflected looks most attractive at this hour. I see the bright curves made by the water-bugs in the moonlight, and a muskrat crossing the river, now at 9 o'clock. 

Finally the last traces of day disappear, about 9.30 o'clock, and the night fairly sets in. 

The color of the moon is more silvery than golden, or silvery with a slight admixture of golden, a sort of burnished cloud. 

The bass tree is budded. 

Haying has commenced. 

Is not this period more than any distinguished for flowers, when roses, swamp-pinks, morning-glories, arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 30, 1852

Cat-mint (Nepeta cataria) in bloom. See June 3, 1852 ("The nepeta by Deacon Brown's, a pretty blue flower.")

Moon nearly full; rose a little before sunset. . . . At first a mere white cloud. As soon as the sun sets, begins to grow brassy. See July 11, 1851 ("[The moon] who was a pale cloud before, begins to emit a silvery light, acquiring at last a tinge of golden as the darkness deepens."); April 30, 1852 ("Then when I turned, I saw in the east, just over the woods, the modest, pale, cloud-like moon, two thirds full, looking spirit-like on these daylight scenes. Such a sight excites me. The earth is worthy to inhabit.") Compare August 12, 1851 ("She will appear but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west.") See also May 3, 1852 ("A great brassy moon going down in the west."); June 1, 1852 ("The moon about full.. . .The moving clouds are the drama of the moonlight nights"); July 20, 1852 (" The crescent moon, meanwhile, grows more silvery, and, as it sinks in the west, more yellowish,")

It is starlight about half an hour after sunset to-night; i. e. the first stars appear. . . .Finally the last traces of day disappear, about 9.30 o'clock, and the night fairly sets in. See August 8, 1851 ("Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour, if we were precise.”);May 8, 1852 (“Starlight marks conveniently a stage in the evening, i. e. when the first star can be seen. ”); June 28,1852 ("Now it is starlight; perhaps that dark cloud in the west has concealed the evening star before . . .Starlight!. . .. That is an epoch, when the last traces of daylight have disappeared and the night (nox) has fairly set in.”); July 12, 1852 (“Now, a quarter after nine, as I walk along the river-bank, long after starlight, and perhaps an hour or more after sunset, I see some of those high-pillared clouds of the day, in the southwest, still reflecting a downy light from the regions of day, they are so high.”); July 20, 1852 ("Then the cloudlets in the west turn rapidly dark, the shadow of night advances in the east, and the first stars become visible. It is starlight. You see the first star in the southwest, and know not how much earlier you might have seen it had you looked. . . .the last traces of daylight disappear, about 10 o'clock, the same time the moon goes down.")

I see the bright curves made by the water-bugs in the moonlight . . . now at 9 o'clock. See June 2, 1860 (“Water-bugs dimple the surface now quite across the river, in the moonlight, for it is a full moon.”); August 8, 1851 (“As I recross the string-pieces of the bridge, I see the water-bugs swimming briskly in the moonlight . . .”)

Haying has commenced. See June 30, 1851 ("Haying has commenced.”)

Arethusas, pogonias, orchises, blue flags, epilobiums. See June 20, 1859 ("Great purple fringed orchis."); July 2, 1857 (“Pogonia ophioglossoides apparently in a day or two.”); July 7,1856 (The snake-head arethusa is now abundant amid the cranberries there [Gowings Swamp].”); July 8, 1857 (“Find a Pogonia ophioglossoides with a third leaf and second flower an inch above the first flower.”); July 24,, 1857 (“ great fields of epilobium or fire-weed, a mass of color. . . .”); August 1, 1856 ("Snake-head arethusa still in the meadow”); June 30,1851 ("The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.”)